By Samuel A. Lopez – USA Herald
In a unanimous ruling that’s as much a philosophical gut punch as it is a legal one, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday slammed the door shut on an inventor’s bid to copyright an artwork conjured entirely by his artificial intelligence system. The decision, a firm nod to the U.S. Copyright Office’s stance, declares that creativity—at least the kind worthy of legal protection—remains a distinctly human affair. For Stephen Thaler, the man behind the AI dubbed “the Creativity Machine.”
The case, Thaler v. Perlmutter et al., isn’t just a dry legal skirmish—it’s a front-row seat to a cultural tug-of-war over what it means to create. Thaler’s artwork, a two-dimensional piece titled A Recent Entrance to Paradise, wasn’t born from brushstrokes or sleepless nights but from algorithms he programmed and set loose. He argued it deserved the same copyright shield as any human-made masterpiece. The Copyright Office said no. A federal judge agreed. And now, a three-judge panel—U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia A. Millett, Robert L. Wilkins, and Judith W. Rogers—has driven the final nail into his appeal, upholding the bedrock principle of the Copyright Act of 1976: only humans can author works worthy of protection.
Three Pivotal Revelations
